Terrible Lizards

To most eyes, dinosaurs are unusual looking animals but on this week's show we take a look at some that are weird and wonderful even by the standards of dinosaurs. We start with the huge theropods of Late Cretaceous Mongolia, the sickle-clawed Theirizinosaurs and boat-faced Deinocheirus with a mention of the tiny ant-eating alvarezsaurs. From here, we move to Europe and ancient archipelagos that p...

Warning: Our guest Richard Herring (53 mins 50 secs) uses colloquialisms for dinosaur male bits - poss best check before letting kids listen. Reproduction is a fundamental of life but it's an area of dinosaur biology rarely discussed at any length though this week we will tackle that area of ignorance. Part of the problem is inevitably the lack of data palaeontologists have of, ahem, certain dinos...

This time out it's another iconic dinosaur and the beautiful Triceratops . These huge animals with their famous three horns and large frill are a major part of so many documentaries and films, if only so they can be seen to be battling with Tyrannosaurus . As with so many of the most famous dinosaurs, Triceratops is actually quite unusual and not really representative of the group to which it belo...

In this episode we take a look at dinosaur skin and talk about the changing appearances of dinosaurs over the last 150 years. Scientists have been constantly updating their ideas about the look of various species and new evidence unfolds and our understanding improves, from their earliest depictions as lumbering lizards, though to the discovery of feathers in dinosaurs at the close of the 20 th Ce...

For our second episode we take a look at the archetypal big dinosaur, Diplodocus . It has an important place in dinosaur history as one of the first very complete animals found, and the first to be cast with copies shipped around the world. As a result, Diplodocus had become lodged in the public mind as a 'typical' sauropod but it has plenty of features that make it unique and unusual. We cover it...

For our first ever episode of Terrible Lizards we start, perhaps inevitably, with the most famous and iconic dinosaur ever – Tyrannosaurus. (Actually I wanted to do Nqwebasaurus but Iszi wouldn't let me). The king is an absolute cultural icon and appears in pretty much every dinosaur movie and documentary of the last 50 years. As science progresses though, that mostly means that the public percept...

A peak at the upcoming series of Terrible Lizards, a podcast about dinosaurs with Dr David Hone and Iszi Lawrence . Guest this series include Chris Packham, Jo Caulfield, Alice Fraser, Richard Herring, Tom Holland and Ralph Attanasia. Please subscribe so you never miss an episode. Please support the show via our Patreon and find us on Facebook.